


Proof of Concept

by the_original_n_chan



Category: Leverage
Genre: Brain Hacking, Cyborg Eliot Spencer, Developing Relationship, Don't copy to another site, Mind Control, Multi, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Post-Season/Series 05, Pre-OT3, Surgery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:15:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27583259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_original_n_chan/pseuds/the_original_n_chan
Summary: A year ago, Eliot disappeared.
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer
Comments: 41
Kudos: 87





	1. Chapter 1

_“Eliot!”_

All Alec could hear over the comm was static. Unless there were words behind and between that static, so soft they were vanishing into the snap and hiss, and he was just missing them. He _shouldn’t_ be missing them. He had to fix it, find the signal, but something was wrong with him or with his tools or the comm, and he just couldn’t figure out what. He tried one thing, then another, but his hands were useless, and all the while the terror inside him grew.

_“Eliot! Come in! Answer me!”_ Nothing. No reply. “ _Parker!_ ” he tried, but she didn’t answer either. He knew she was out there looking, though, and a bolt of anguish stabbed him, because he couldn’t stand it if she disappeared too. “ _Parker!_ ” He wasn’t supposed to leave the van, but he fumbled the door open, stepped out into the parking garage—and _it was the wrong van_ , and then he was running through endless levels of cars trying to find Lucille because maybe the comm would work then, or he might find Eliot’s truck instead, _and he’d lost the comm somewhere and he couldn’t hear anything and—and—and—_

_—a gunshot._

Alec jolted awake with a gasp. His heart thumping almost painfully, he stared up at the ceiling, blinking hard as he tried to pull his jangled thoughts together. Bits of the dream stuck to them, refusing to be shaken free. Damn, he hated that feeling.

It was a gray morning, typical February. The weather matched his mood to perfection, once that burst of adrenaline had ebbed, and only the need to distance himself from the nightmare kept him from nestling down under the warm covers and going back to sleep. Instead he rolled himself out of bed, shuddering, and pulled on a robe, knotting the belt around his waist as if it would help hold him together, protect him from flashing back onto that helpless, panicked fear.

And the irony of the dream was— _it hadn’t happened like that at all._

There’d been no mission, no plan gone awry. No reason they could find, no explanation. Just one day—one regular day—Eliot had disappeared.

Alec had tried to locate him—Lord, how he’d tried. He’d dug into every corner of the internet, turned over every rock he could find. He’d unearthed a lot of dark, disgusting, creepy things. But never a trace of their hitter.

He and Parker had laid out what had to be dozens of possibilities. Kidnapped? Killed? (There were certainly plenty of people and organizations who’d want to do either or both. That alone had taken them into the double digits.) Had Eliot just walked away of his own accord? (“ _Eliot would never leave us!_ ” Parker had insisted, and Alec hadn’t had it in him to argue that point.) Amnesia? Aliens? (The latter was unlikely, but—Drake’s equation.) The list went on and on.

But in the end, they just didn’t _know._ And sometimes Alec thought that the not knowing was worst of all.

When he came out into the living room, he wasn’t surprised to find Parker there. He hadn’t been expecting her, per se, but she’d been half living with him long enough that whenever she was present his subconscious just sort of took it for granted. She was standing by the window, arms crossed over her chest as she stared out at the Lower Manhattan skyline, rising up against the featureless gray clouds.

“I brought donuts,” she said softly.

“Thanks, mama.” Instead of going to the kitchen, he crossed the room to stand slightly behind and to one side of her, waiting on her mood.

“You were dreaming,” Parker said, her inflection unsure, making the words half a question. “I didn’t know if I should wake you up.”

“It’s okay.” He sighed a little in spite of himself, and after a moment she rocked back to lean against him. He rested his hands on her hips; when she relaxed under his touch, he slid his arms around her, holding her close, and he felt his heart squeeze tight inside his chest, caught in the fierce grip of his love for her. They’d had some hard times—there had been some epic fights and some equally dramatic breakdowns, yet here they were, still together. Heartbroken, grieving that empty place in their lives, but still strong.

“Next month, it’s the....” Parker faltered, her voice cracking a little.

The anniversary of the day that Eliot had disappeared. Right. “Do you want to...do something?”

“I don’t know.”

“We don’t have to decide now,” he reassured her. “We can just see how it goes.”

Maybe this would be a marker for them. A turning point. Because he figured that they’d gone through most of the stages of grief—denial, anger, all of that—and they’d been stuck at depression for a while now. Was it time to let go? To move forward into acceptance?

He didn’t _want_ to accept it. Neither, he knew, did Parker. Not without some kind of closure—god, _any_ kind of closure. Not with so much left unsaid, so much unrealized.

(“ _We never told him!_ ” Parker had sobbed, on that one darkest night when they’d finally had to face the likelihood that Eliot was never coming back to them. “ _We never told him how we felt!_ ”)

Bending his head, he brushed his lips against her temple. “I’m gonna have some of those donuts,” he murmured close to her ear, hoping she could read the tenderness in his voice, along with just a hint of teasing. “I take it you already had your share?”

“What do you think?” She twisted in his arms enough to look sidelong up at him, her eyes half-lidded like a satisfied cat’s, the corners of her mouth quirked slightly. The smile was small but real, and it lit a spark of happiness in him, dispelling the last lingering ghosts of his dream.

_Love you_ , his heart whispered, aching sweetly, and— _love you_ to the one who was gone.

No, they’d never forget. But together, him and Parker—somehow, they would go on.

* * *

His internal alarm brought him to consciousness. He scanned his surroundings and himself—all at baseline—then rose and started to prepare himself for the day.

Bodily functions. Exercise. Washing, self-evaluation, dressing. When he was ready, he went to the door and put his hand on the security panel; it cross-checked with his schedule and then let him out. After a brief diversion to the eating area for fuel, he continued on to the garage and the car that was waiting for him.

Driverless, it took him through the city. He watched the streets and buildings, darkened by the rain, with pops of color from signs and traffic lights breaking through the grayness; he tracked the simple patterns of vehicles in motion and at rest, the more complex ones of people, alone, in groups, standing, walking, hurrying to escape the weather. The threat level was low; he remained at level two alertness. It left wide empty spaces in his thoughts.

There were memories there. Like paintings on glass slides, brittle, translucent, catching light when they shifted. _Clink._ They were vivid but remote, nothing he could touch or analyze. But they were there.

_The roof of a skyscraper at night. Green glow of servers in a sub-basement. Walking away from someone (someones?) in the gray predawn light._

The car drew up to the door of the facility. Exiting, he made his way to the preparation area, where he removed his clothes and stored them, then proceeded through the door into the operating room. Passing among the masked and gowned personnel (no weapons, visible or concealed; nothing notable in stance or presentation—doctors and assistants, all familiar, no threat), he lay down on the table. He remained motionless while they fastened restraints around him, attached sensors to his body, took readings. When they plugged him into the computer, his mind doubled up on itself, his own awareness intertwining with the external other that moved in between his thoughts, testing, adjusting, writing things into his brain. It took hold of his body, until he couldn’t have moved if he’d wanted to.

A redundancy, since he couldn’t want to.

The people around him spoke among themselves, discussing his status. On the other side of the observation window, the Boss was half watching him while listening to a couple of the project leads. If the man himself was here, it would probably be a major procedure. He was never told what they were going to do to him, but he’d also never been told that he wasn’t _allowed_ to know. Without a directive otherwise, he adjusted his hearing, filtering out the nearer voices and focusing in on the more distant ones, supplementing the faint audio by reading their lips.

“— _looking great_ ,” the coordinator was saying. “ _Muscular nanomatrix is stable; everything regenerated perfectly. And the HA-composite support structure has passed all the initial tests. We’re ready to add the subdermal plating._ ”

Arms again, probably. The prediction was confirmed when an attendant inserted the needle. He was distantly aware of the cold, numbing burn as the injection blocked his accelerated healing. Tools rattled on a tray table, and then the scalpel began to trace its lines of fire, the sensation as crystalline yet far away as those disconnected shards of memory.

He turned his gaze up toward the ceiling as the surgeon began peeling back his skin.

Behind the window, the man who owned him was smiling.


	2. Chapter 2

“ _No_ ,” Alec said. If he’d been typing the word, he’d need a screen the size of the Hollywood sign to properly express the sheer enormity of his feelings. Instead, he had to settle for his very best death glare as he jabbed his finger toward the front door of the makerspace. _His_ makerspace. No smarmy British assholes allowed. “ _Get out._ ”

“Now, now—I went to a lot of trouble to find you,” Sterling said, favoring him with the tight, sly smile that they all loathed. Alec’s hatred of the man had gone down slightly—very slightly—after he’d let them slide on the Black Book job, but at the sight of that smug face, it was starting to ratchet back up again. 

And now they were going to have to think about moving again. Dammit, he’d just gotten them nicely settled here in Brooklyn.

“Yeah, well, then you went to a lot of trouble to have your ass kicked out of here,” he retorted. 

Sterling’s brows quirked up. “Oh, is that part of _your_ job now that you’ve lost your pet brawler? How’s that been working out for you?”

Alec stiffened—only for a split second before he controlled himself. He really hoped Sterling hadn’t noticed. The last thing they needed was Sterling all up in that business. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You need to leave,” Parker said from the doorway to the metal shop. She began prowling across the lobby, her eyes sharp and cold as the edge of a glacier.

Sterling ignored her, or at least made a show of ignoring her. “I have something you’ll want to see,” he said to Alec. Taking a small item out of his suit pocket, he tossed it over. Alec was half inclined to let it fall to the floor, but his hands had already gone out to catch it. It was a basic flash drive, and he gave Sterling an unimpressed, skeptical look. Sterling nodded wordlessly toward the laptop sitting on the counter.

With an annoyed huff, Alec slid in behind the laptop and inserted the drive. It held a set of image files; he opened one at random. “That’s Noel Civette,” he said, shrugging, “Tech magnate, specializes in biotechnology, nanomaterials, human-machine interface stuff, owns like a hundred patents, got more money than God. His face is on tech blogs a couple of times a week. Ain’t nothing special.”

“Look clo—” Sterling began, before Parker cut him off.

“Zoom in, upper left.” She leaned in over Alec’s shoulder, and he could feel the tension in her; she was practically vibrating with it. He complied, then sucked in his breath sharply as the image resolved.

“ _Eliot,_ ” Parker whispered, her voice faint and fragile.

It was him, unmistakably him. His hair was shorter than when they’d last seen him, he was wearing a suit and sunglasses, but that was _his_ face, wearing a familiar, grimly deadpan expression, _his_ broad shoulders and muscular arms and that very _distinctive_ way he carried himself. Alec drank in the sight of him with near desperation.

_When?_

_How?_

“Pull out a little,” Parker said. Her gaze raked the image, gathering details. “Bodyguard. He’s doing security for Civette.” She pointed. “There are two more guys, here and here, but he’s on Civette personally.”

“So you _didn’t_ know,” Sterling said, and Alec jerked his head up to glare at him. The man was eyeing them speculatively, eyes narrowed.

“Talk,” Alec snapped out. He was not having any goddamn smarter-than-thou runaround. Not on this.

“ _Now_ ,” Parker snarled.

Sterling glanced around pointedly. It was getting on up to closing hours; all the classes were over, but a couple of artists were still doing their thing in the metal shop, and there was that one hardcore cosplayer who’d stay until they literally chased her out. With a growl, Alec led them to one of the offices, where he took a seat behind the desk, while Parker perched on a corner of it like a watchful bird of prey. It left Sterling standing in front of them like he’d been called up on the carpet for being a bad boy, because Alec was intending to use every method at his disposal to strip the man of that obnoxious air of superiority.

Sterling looked mildly annoyed, but mostly like he wanted the remote and the wall of video screens so he could make a dramatic presentation. Too bad—those were in the actual Leverage office, and Sterling was not getting access to the inner sanctum this time. Denied, Sterling instead shoved his hands casually into his pockets and began strolling around the room as he monologued.

“Interpol has been running a long-term investigation of Civette for all kinds of trafficking, everything from microtechnologies to human organs to people.” Ugh, typical bad guy shit. Alec wished he was surprised, but he’d already gotten the impression via the media that Civette was an egotistical manchild with all the morals of a cheerful wolverine. “He has a meeting coming up with a number of important players—our intel suggests that it’s to discuss some kind of new product or technology that he’ll be making available. Ideally, we’d be able to collect evidence there that would enable us to wrap up both him and his customers. But...there’s a complication.”

“You mean Eliot,” Parker said. She’d taken the laptop from Alec and was flipping through the rest of the pictures.

“I wasn’t sure if your team was working this as one of your cases. But apparently not.” Sterling stopped and turned to fix Alec with a penetrating stare. “So what is Spencer doing there?”

“I ’unno,” Alec shrugged. “I ain’t his babysitter. He takes jobs sometimes; we don’t ask all the details.” As he spoke, his thoughts were whirling. What the hell kind of job would snatch Eliot away from them without even a word of warning? Some top secret government shit? Was Vance behind this? But Eliot wouldn’t have just left them high and dry. _Dying day_ , and all that. Right?

“So he’s working for Civette?” Sterling pounced.

“I didn’t say _that_ ,” Alec scoffed. “That ain’t the kind of thing Eliot does anymore.” Another possibility: Eliot was being blackmailed or otherwise coerced, in which case he _might_ be working for Civette. Or working undercover for someone other than Interpol who had set their sights on the man. That particular line of thought had the potential to lead him down a rabbit hole of endless complexity, Alec realized. He needed more info in order to narrow down the possibilities.

“Well, whatever he’s doing there, he’s in the way of our operation,” Sterling said.

“How inconvenient for you,” Parker muttered. She was still looking at the pictures, but Alec knew she was hyperaware of everything in the room and especially Sterling, and that the low-voiced sarcasm was covering up a volatile mix of anxiety and rage. On the one hand, it would be highly entertaining to see Parker commit mayhem on Sterling; on the other, it would break the chain of No-Stabbing Wednesdays. Plus they really didn’t need the law actively hunting them down at the same time as they were trying to figure out what was going on with Eliot. It would be better to keep Sterling at least pretending to be on their side.

Alec sighed, resigned. “What do you want from us, Sterling?”

Sterling pointed at Alec, and Alec realized for the first time that Sterling somehow thought he was the one in charge here. That was freaking hilarious. “Go and collect your hitter and get him out of our way. Otherwise, I’m not responsible for whatever happens to him.”

Parker let out a bark of laughter, and Alec grinned. Now he got why Sterling had _really_ come to them. Even Interpol didn’t want to fuck around with Eliot Spencer if they didn’t have to. Sterling scowled at them, clearly not appreciating the humor of the situation. “Or, if you prefer, we can handle this the hard way,” he added with silky malice. “I’m sure he can be incriminated in _something_. And of course, there’s always Myanmar….”

Fine. Enough sparring—time to get down to serious business. “We need all the information you have,” Alec said. “ _All_ of it. And _your_ people keep out of _our_ way, y’hear?”

“This isn’t one of your little jobs,” Sterling warned. “You don’t interfere with our operation.”

Alec gave the man a look of lofty disdain. “Wouldn’t dream of it.” Sterling squinted at him, then apparently decided there was nothing to be gained by challenging his sincerity.

“You’ll have the information,” Sterling said, turning away from them dismissively. “The meeting is in Montenegro in three days, so you’d better get cracking.”

“Then go away and let us work,” Parker said without even glancing at him. Sterling paused as if calculating whether or not he should try to get the last word in, but blessedly he left without saying anything else, and Alec sagged in relief. Damn, he hated Sterling’s twisty-ass mind games.

Rising, he walked around the desk until he could rest his hand on Parker’s shoulder. “You okay?” he asked.

She nodded, short and sharp. “It’s really him.” Her voice was shaky, the words half a question, like she hardly dared to believe it after all this time.

“It is.” Alec squeezed her shoulder very gently, then leaned in to murmur against her hair, “And we’re gonna find him, mama. We’re finally gonna find him and bring him home.”

He just prayed that they weren’t also going to find something terrible. Because he still had no idea why Eliot just suddenly vanished on them. And this guy, Civette?

Yeah. Nothing good was going on there.


	3. Chapter 3

The casino was crowded; the risk level was high. No attack was anticipated, but that meant nothing, and per directives he was to maintain at level three alertness until the Boss had returned to a secure location. His attention shifted constantly, alternating between a wide focus that tracked the patterns of ebb and flow, stillness and motion, and a more specific analysis of potential threats: people in close proximity, approaching with intent, or holding position along clear sightlines. Filtering out the chaff, he let the sensory distractions wash by him—loud conversations, laughter and excited shouts, in the distance the racket of the slot machines and nearby the quieter clink and clash of glass and ice at the bar where they were standing, the glare of bright, flashing lights, of reflective metal and mirrors, the waft of perfume. A woman smiled directly at him; once he determined that she was unlikely to be dangerous, he turned away from her, discouraging any further interest.

He’d already tagged multiple people with some form of combat training, but all were in guard postures, concentrating on their own principals, or else they were security personnel working for the casino. Most of them had registered him in turn, since he was making no effort to conceal himself, but none were eyeing the Boss as a target, and they were professionals, so random violence was unlikely. He kept track of them, but they were of no immediate concern.

It was the spook that was troubling him.

A woman, five foot seven, blond, wearing the standard dark slacks, white shirt, and gold vest of a resort employee. Her passage through the crowd was smooth, unhurried, seemingly purposeful but in fact purposeless—not a direct route between any of the most likely employee destinations, and if she were off duty, she wouldn’t be making multiple passes through the room. She kept to his peripherals as much as possible, too much so for it to be coincidence, especially when she lingered, half concealed behind a column, to gaze directly at him.

A benefit of sunglasses was that they concealed exactly where he was looking. Focusing in, he watched her lips move almost imperceptibly. Subvocalizing.

Shifting closer to the Boss, he sent an alert signal. The Boss glanced down at his watch as it buzzed, then said to the woman he was talking with, “Excuse me a minute.” Turning toward him, the Boss asked, “What is it?”

Implicit permission to speak granted, he leaned in nearer and murmured, “We’re under surveillance. One person on the floor, probably on comms with someone else.”

“Huh.” The Boss chewed his lip. “Think it’s the police?”

“No.” His absolute certainty surprised him. No matter how good somebody was at analyzing people and situations, there could always be anomalies, mistakes could be made—but in this case, he _knew_. The truth of it felt like a kick to the chest.

_A light-footed, gliding saunter. A silver drink tray catching light. A smirk of triumph._

_Clink_.

The Boss was studying him speculatively. He knew his face hadn’t revealed his split-second distraction, but he still felt vaguely uneasy. “See if you can find out more,” the Boss instructed him.

Those were some very nonspecific mission parameters, but he could work with them. One thing needed clarification, though. “If they’re a threat?”

“Make them go away. Quietly, and with no mess. We don’t want any local heat to upset our guests.” The man grinned impishly, as if the whole thing was a game. “And record it for later,” he added, apparently as an afterthought, as he turned back toward the woman in a clear dismissal.

What he did would be studied, then. More data for the program. Although compared to the exercises that he’d already gone through, he doubted there’d be much of new interest. Before he left, he scrutinized the Boss’s companion closely, confirming his previous assessment of her (minimal threat), then signaled for Esposito to draw in and take over close protection. With the Boss covered, he moved off, making his way past the curve of the bar and toward the VIP host desk. He paused in a spot left clear by the crowd’s traffic pattern and made a show of checking his phone, while he scanned the casino for the spook.

It took a couple of extra seconds to find her; she wasn’t where he’d expected her to be. And the instant he spotted her, it was immediately clear that she wasn’t on the Boss.

She was on _him_.

That changed everything.

First of all, it cut the most likely motivations down to two. Possibility one: Someone might have figured out that he was the point of interest for the Boss’s meeting, in which case they were trying to either gather intel in advance or actually steal him. He was proprietary technology, and he knew his value (in approximation; no one’d given him an actual dollar amount); he could certainly be the primary target.

Or, possibility two, it could be someone from his life before. He knew there were all kinds of people with reasons to be after him: government, military, law enforcement, past employers, rivals, enemies. And...others.

_A kaleidoscope whisper of memories, both dark and bright, clinkclinkclink. Yelling and pain in a stone room. A sleek-haired man in a white robe, a loud splash, the smell of chlorine. A fist to his ribs. “FBI!” shouted in a sunny plaza; a double presence at his back—_

Too many candidates to enumerate without more time for thought. He focused on the moment instead.

Because the other thing about being the unknown’s target was that it gave him a measure of control. If he was the one being followed, it would be child’s play to get his shadow wherever he wanted them.

Of course, actually interrogating them about their intentions would be difficult, since the Boss hadn’t extended his permission to speak.

Dumbass.

The man was a medical and engineering genius—had to be to have taken him apart and remade him like this, reconstructing him with a mix of technologies that each on their own would be the stuff of science fiction, writing ownership into his body and brain.

Still a fucking dumbass, though.

* * *

Parker eased through the open sliding glass doors. The terrace beyond was unoccupied; the upstairs cafe was closed, and the breeze off the water was chilly enough to have discouraged any loiterers.

Well. It was _mostly_ unoccupied.

Her pulse rate had been elevated ever since Eliot had left the casino; now it beat even harder, drumming in her chest and throat, and her insides were all twisted up and shaky from having so many _feelings_. She was probably going to be angry soon, and there was definitely going to be crying, but at the moment the most overwhelming sensation was a relief so intense it was almost like pain. It left her trembling and unsteady, like Hardison at the end of a base jump.

Because there was _Eliot_ , after more than a year, standing across the terrace from her. He was _real_ , not a security camera still or a paparazzi photo; he was _right there_ , standing by the terrace wall and looking out over the sea, not a distant figure in a crowd. Joy bubbled up in her, turning that relief into a light, dazzling fizz of eagerness, and she smiled wider than she had in months. “Eliot!” she called out, starting toward him. “Eliot, where—”

He whipped around and charged her.

She bolted on instinct, because that was not an _I’m so happy to see you_ dash, that was _I’m going to do some violence_. She didn’t know why, but—and he was on her so fast, she had to throw herself to the side and roll, scramble to her feet and sprint back the other way. Somehow Eliot got between her and the doors; she backed a couple of guarded steps, trying to read some expression in his hidden eyes and down-turned mouth, intention in the set of his shoulders and the way his weight was poised—then feinted right, whirled, and leaped for the edge of the terrace. It was a long drop to the restaurant roof below, but she could make it. She dove over the low wall—

—and a hand clamped onto her ankle, like a steel manacle but tighter. Brought up short, she swung inward and crashed against the face of the building, Stunned and gasping, she scrabbled at the stones but couldn’t keep herself from being yanked upward, the edge of the wall scraping her stomach as she was dragged over it. “Eliot!” she panted, then hissed in fear and fury as he continued manhandling her, jerking her upright and pressing her back against the wall. She writhed and twisted, wrestling for freedom—tried to knee him in the groin, but he swiveled his hips to block it with his thigh. She was pinned with nowhere to go, and he was too strong—she needed space to fight or to escape. One hand was free, and she went for his face—

Pain blasted from her jaw up through her skull, blinding her with its lightning-and-thunder-crack. She hit the ground awkwardly and struggled to reorient herself. The side of her face stung and ached; she tasted a faint tang of blood.

(“ _Parker, what’s going on?_ ” Hardison was saying anxiously in her ear.)

She touched her cheek, probing it with care, then glared up at Eliot in absolute shock and outrage, because he would _never_ — “You _hit_ me!”

Then she saw his face.

She must have knocked the sunglasses off in the struggle. And his eyes...they weren’t Eliot’s eyes. They weren’t even eyes at all. Just two spots of lurid, glowing green.

She shrieked as he reached down and grabbed her. Before she could even try to resist, he’d pulled her up, spun her around and bent her forward over the wall, her arm wrenched up behind her back. “Stop it!” she cried out. “You’re hurting me!” Because he was, and _Eliot_ would stop, Eliot would never hurt her in the first place, but this...this.... Over the comm, Hardison was pleading with her to answer, to tell him what was happening.

Eliot froze in the midst of searching her pockets. Then he leaned forward and plucked out the earbud.

“Hardison, shut up! Don’t say anything!” she screamed, because Hardison mustn’t give anything away, he needed to stay hidden, stay safe—she shouldn’t even have used his name, but her thoughts were in splinters from the pain and shock and horror. Twisting her head around, she stared up at Eliot as he straightened and tucked the comm into his ear, then stood listening, his head cocked.

_Eliot...._

“You’re not him,” she whispered. He looked down at her, and through tearing-up eyes she saw those green lights expand and contract. They even seemed to shift angle, like lenses tilting. She had to turn her face away. “ _You’re not Eliot._ ”

A moment passed, and abruptly that harsh grip released her. She crumpled, collapsing into a huddle on the ground. With her eyes squeezed shut, she heard a rustle and click as he— _it?_ —crouched to retrieve the sunglasses, heard footsteps moving steadily away, and then the sobbing started, and she didn’t hear anything else until Hardison found her there and wrapped her in his strong, warm, trembling arms.

* * *

Eliot strode down the corridor like he was a man with a destination and nobody had better get in his fucking way. He kept his face expressionless, but on the inside he was clenched like a fist, trying to keep from shaking apart.

It hadn’t surprised him that she’d known his name, considering he’d already figured out that he was her target. It _had_ surprised him when she’d called it out, abandoning stealth. And it had surprised him that—

_You’re not Eliot._

His breath hissed through his teeth. Like a sucker punch out of nowhere, seeing her smile, hearing his name on her lips. The adrenaline surge had sent _Danger!_ all along his nerves—he’d moved on instinct and programming, his whole being surging to take her down because she was a potential threat turned actual. He knew her, he knew that he knew her, he’d _known_ at that moment that he knew her, and yet that knowledge had been abstract and crystalline, painted on glass—

— _fair skin and golden hair, the weight and shape of her fallen on top of him from the second story, the flash of a laugh_ —

— _ice and blue-white twilight and «we do what others can’t»_ —

— _«for luck»_ —

—until he’d looked down to see her tears, her pain, until he’d heard the familiar frightened whisper in his ear (“ _…Parker?_ ”) and the naked betrayal in her voice.

_You’re not Eliot._

And something in him had cracked.

Those older memories were still frozen, the feelings in them distant (but they were _there_ , somewhere just out of reach, he knew it, just as he knew _Parker_ , knew _Hardison_ ).

This new one seared like fire.

He received a signal: _return_. Pivoting, he changed course for the elevator, tapped his keycard against the access panel for the top floor. As he rose, that burning cooled, condensing into something dull and hard inside his chest. Parameters and directives settled back onto him like a well-worn harness.

When the elevator door opened onto the penthouse suite, the Boss glanced over at him, smiling. “Ah, there you are,” he said. He’d removed his jacket; he was slightly flushed, his pupils dilated; his balance was off but not actually impaired. A pair of sapphire-blue stiletto heels had been kicked off near the door; the sound of running water was audible from the master bath. “How’d it go?”

From behind his sunglasses, he stared at the man for a precisely measured length of time, exactly as long as he could without it being noticable, without it being a refusal to speak.

“Just a thief,” he said at last. “It’s been taken care of.” No further details were required unless he was asked directly for more information.

And maybe the man would forget about the recording until all of this was over and they were far away.

* * *

“I told you— _it’s not him!_ ” The words were half scream and half sob, and the raw anguish in them tore at Alec’s heart. Flinging the cold pack aside, Parker leaped up off the couch and started—not even pacing, it was more like a flinch in one direction, a recoil in another. Like she was trapped in place, and Lord knew how Parker couldn’t bear being trapped.

“Hey,” he tried, and she threw up her hands.

“It’s Evil Robot Eliot,” she insisted. “Like in _The Terminator_ , with the guy,” she mimed the T-800 cutting out its damaged eye, “and the thing.” She swivelled her hand next to her face in mimicry of the exposed lens. “We’re done here, we’re out. Eliot is... _gone._ ” Her voice broke on the last word.

Everything in him wanted to deny what she was saying, to insist that she was wrong, dead wrong, but…. “I hear you, baby,” he said instead. “I hear you.” He took a deep breath, drawing together his shreds of calm, then gestured her nearer. She slunk closer to where he was sitting, stopping just within reach and staring down at him with sullen, defiant grief. The bruise on her face was starting to darken, and her eyes were red and raw from crying.

“I can’t think of anything more awful than Eliot turning on you,” he murmured. “On _us_.” Slowly, gently, he reached out and took her hands, careful of the scrapes he’d doctored earlier. “It’s just that there are other possibilities. Listen—” He tugged at her as she started to turn away. “It could be that he’s been brainwashed or memory-wiped or something, so he didn’t even know you. He could, I dunno, be under Civette’s control somehow.”

“What about the—” She pulled a hand out of his to gesture at her eye again.

“Could be something that they put into him. Look, I’m just saying we don’t know enough yet. And even if that is some kind of evil robot or something…do you think Eliot would want that? Something with his face out there hurting people? Hurting _you_?” Some of the fight had seeped out of Parker, and wordlessly he coaxed her to sit back down next to him. “Something real bad is happening here. We can’t just leave it be.” Retrieving the cold pack, he placed it against her cheek again; she raised her hand, but instead of taking over holding the pack, she rested it on his hand instead. Oh…his girl was so strong. So good. He bent to brush his lips against her forehead, and she leaned into it. Her expression was still dark with fear and betrayal, but he could feel in the silence how she gathered herself. _Work the problem,_ she always said.

“Whether that’s Eliot or not, we do this _for_ Eliot,” he told her.

“For Eliot,” she echoed. This time her voice was sure.

* * *

The suite had been quiet for two hours and seventeen minutes; the woman had left, and the man was sleeping. He was expected to be asleep too. It was standard daily protocol.

He hadn’t been _ordered_ to sleep. And in a strange place, it was better to remain at an elevated level of alertness. Security needs trumped standard protocol.

He lay with his eyes open, staring up at the ceiling.

For the last hour and forty-eight minutes, a voice had been murmuring in his ear.

The subject matter shifted from topic to topic, seemingly at whim. From sports score updates (with occasional complaints about wifi quality) to an incomprehensible rant about “lootboxes” to an account of teaching some kids how to use lasers, which seemed ill-advised but...typical. The most recent digression had been about some cartoon that supposedly he would enjoy along with a list of reasons why (“ _okay, no spoilers, man, but..._ ”).

At the moment, the voice had entered one of its periods of silence. He lay still, listening. Waiting.

“ _Parker’s sleeping_ ,” the voice said at last. It had been hushed, even in its fits of passion; now it was even softer. Tender. A little sad. “ _She’s...okay. I mean, she’s stressed out. Angry. Got a few bruises and scrapes, but nothing major. You didn’t hurt her...well, you actually kinda_ did _, but not seriously. She’s really freaked out, though. I mean, can you blame her? She just...._ ” The voice faltered, then strengthened again. “ _We need to_ know _, man_. _What’s going on? Why did you—_ ”

The voice had gradually been getting louder; it cut off sharply, and he heard a ragged catch of breath. Then, a whisper:

“ _Do you remember us?Are you...Eliot?_ ”

A waiting pause, then a faint huff, something like a laugh.

“ _Dunno if you’re even out there listening. But if you are...we miss you. We want you back. And we ain’t gonna give up on you. No matter what._ ”

Seven seconds of silence.

At last, a sigh.

“ _Okay, gotta get some shut-eye. Big day tomorrow. G’night, man. Radio Free Eliot, signing off._ ”

His pulse rate jumped. Without conscious direction, his hand moved to his ear. He hesitated, strangely uncertain, then tapped his finger once against the earbud.

Alec froze. Was that...?

“Hello?” he said, fighting to keep his voice down, even though a sudden crazy hope made him want to shout. “Is...is someone there?”

Another tap, and his heart, which already had been beating faster, started really going crazy. He moved quickly away from the bedroom door. “Is that you?” he whispered. “ _Eliot?_ ”

... _tap._

His head was all turned around with excitement, confusion, delight, relief, and about a hundred questions. “What’s...uh. I’m guessing you can’t talk right now, right?”

_Tap._

There was a potential issue here, he realized, and with an effort he got his logic brain back online. “Okay, could you, like, tap four times? So I know that this isn’t some kind of random noise or something?”

_Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap._

“Oh my god,” he breathed. “So, one for yes, two for no, okay?”

_Tap_.

He did a little victory dance, choking on an only slightly hysterical laugh. “Okay, okay—first of all, are you all right?”

There was a longish pause, and then: _Tap. Tap. Tap_.

He frowned. Not yes, not no. “Is that a maybe?” Silence. “I’m’a take that as ‘it’s complicated,’ I guess.” He blew out a breath, trying to distill everything he needed to know down to yes/no questions.

“You remember us,” he started. “You know who we are, right? Me and Parker?”

_Tap._

“So that means you’re not Evil Robot Eliot.”

The pause before Eliot’s one-tap reply gave off distinct _What the fuck?_ vibes. Alec could just picture the look on his face.

“Are you sure? ’Cause, you know, maybe they implanted the real Eliot’s memories into you and—”

_TAP._

Who’d have ever thought that he’d be so comforted by a single tap? But the pissed-off grumpiness it communicated was so blessedly familiar, and after more than a year’s absence, so painfully missed. He felt like he might implode from the crush of the feelings he was having, but he kept it cool, kept his tone light. “Okay, I’ll take your word for it.”

There was so damn much he wanted, _needed_ to know, and the limits of the binary response were excruciating. “Look, we need to get together somewhere and actually talk. Can you—”

_Tap tap._

“Wait, you didn’t even let me—” A staccato rhythm of tapping interrupted him again; after a split-second’s annoyance, he realized what he was hearing. “Is that—is that Morse code? Back it up, start again, I missed some of that.” Holding his breath, he focused every scrap of his attention on spelling out the words, and his heart was already sinking before the last letters had even come through.

S...T...A...Y ... A...W...A...Y...

“Eliot, what’re you talking about? What—” God _damn_ it, the man was trying to protect them, wasn’t he, and this was _not_ the time for that, not when he was the entire reason they were there, if not to bring him home, then at least for some answers. The man owed them that much, at least. Half angry, half frightened, Alec demanded, “Why are you saying to stay away? What’s going on?” He waited, but there was no reply, no explanation, and a creeping dread began to come over him.

“Eliot? Are you still there?”

Silence.

“Eliot?”

“... _Eliot?_ ”

Switching off the comm, Eliot removed the earbud. He placed it in the nightstand drawer, then shut his eyes.


	4. Chapter 4

Now, let it not be said that Alec Hardison couldn’t appreciate a scenic view. Sure, Eliot always gave him crap about hiding from the outdoors, and it was true that when it came to nature he generally preferred the virtual to the real. But the midmorning sunlight shimmering on the wide open expanse of the Adriatic, the mountainous coastline rolling off to either side, the yellow and white spring flowers busting out all around the ruins of the clifftop fortress—it was all pretty damn beautiful.

It was also a hecking _weird_ place for a meeting.

If he hadn’t gotten the info from cloning three separate cellphones, he’d think that he’d made a mistake. But here he was, and here they were: six very rich, very sketchy dudes with all sorts of under-the-table military and governmental connections, their assorted personal protection squads, one lovely lady who was either arm candy for the Russian guy or secretly a hitter (or possibly both), Civette with his own two bodyguards, and Eliot.

_Eliot._

The instant Alec spotted him, his heart twinged. God, Eliot looked good. Among all the bad guys dressed in various styles of suits, he stood out in his quasi military get-up of tank top, camo pants, and combat boots. He was in a formal parade rest stance, back straight and chest out, his hands clasped behind him, and the lack of sleeves showed off his biceps magnificently. The breeze off the water stirred his hair, but otherwise he was motionless. His face held no expression, and those ever-present sunglasses hid the eyes that had terrified Parker so badly. He looked ominously imposing and thoroughly badass, and Alec had never wanted anything more in his life than he wanted to run right over there, wrap that man up in his arms, and never let him go.

“Gentlemen,” Civette pronounced, and Alec unwillingly dragged his attention away from Eliot. Adjusting his earphone, he aimed the parabolic mic at the gathering to make sure that he didn’t miss anything. “Thank you all for coming. I know this is all a bit unusual,” he waved his hand at their surroundings, smirking, “but I promise you it’ll be interesting.”

“It had better be,” muttered the guy from the British defense contracting company.

Civette began pacing gently back and forth, like he was walking the stage at a tech expo. His fancy shoes crunched on the gravelly dirt. “Now, as I explained in my invitation, what we’ll be looking at isn’t intended for mass production. This is an extremely sophisticated, revolutionary, and expensive technology that will appeal to the high-end market that can afford it.”

“So in other words, the Tesla of covert military technology,” the British guy said, half sneering. Somebody had definitely pissed in his Weetabix this morning.

Civette favored him with a tolerantly gracious and also slightly smug smile. “The name of the game,” he announced to the gathering as a whole, “is human enhancement.” He nodded to Eliot, who stepped forward crisply and then snapped back into his parade rest.

One of the North Koreans leaned toward their leader and said something urgent that included the words “Eliot Spencer.” A slight stir went through the crowd.

“Wait, that’s _Eliot Spencer_?” said the Russian. “ _Moreau’s_ Spencer?”

“He _was_ ,” Civette purred, like he personally had stolen Eliot for his own, and Alec seethed.

“Oh, don’t you even—he ain’t yours neither,” he muttered under his breath. “That’s _our_ Eliot.”

“ _What’s going on?_ ” Parker asked in the ear that wasn’t occupied listening to the mic. Things had been quiet so far on her end; her infiltration of Civette’s hotel suite must have been going smoothly.

“Not much aside from Civette being a dick. He’s just getting into his sales pitch now.” Suddenly Alec’s brain caught up from its brief distraction, and the realization clicked. “Oh my god. _Eliot_ is his product.”

“ _I told you_ ,” Parker said, sounding exasperated _. “Evil robot_.”

Instead of getting into it with her again, Alec refocused on Civette and his presentation. “This isn’t just Eliot Spencer,” Civette was saying. “This is the improved version. Faster. Stronger. More indestructible.”

“And _this_ is what you’re selling?” the Saudi prince asked, his eyebrows rising. He eyed Eliot up and down with the kind of speculative interest that could get any guy who _wasn’t_ a prince executed in his home country.

“Oh, not _him_ ,” Civette chuckled. “He’s here as a showcase for the enhancements. Think of him as a demo model. Something like a concept car.”

“I will punch you in the teeth,” Alec promised sotto voce. “Dunno when or how, but it’s gonna happen.”

“And now to the reason I’ve invited you out here this morning. I trust you’ve brought your very best men, as requested?” A little stir of reactions went through the various heavies: puzzlement, interest, dawning excitement, tense alertness. The North Korean who’d recognized Eliot was wearing a definite _oh shit_ expression. Smart man. “Great!” Civette clapped his hands. “Then you can all observe our prototype in action.”

“You want _us_...to fight _him_ ,” one of the mooks said disbelievingly. His boss, the Lebanese businessman, glowered at him.

“Oh, not one-on-one, don’t worry.” The man bristled at the implication that he’d actually been worried, but Civette was already going on, “You’ll be taking him on in teams. _And_ all at once.” He made a show of taking a headcount. “That’s twenty against one,” he said, and then added, with a smirk, “I like those odds.”

The South African mogul had brightened. “Something like a human hunt, then,” he said.

Civette blinked, then looked intrigued. “Oh, that’s a good idea. Maybe some other time, though. Today, in the interest of observation, we’re going to restrict the field a bit.” He nodded to one of his men, who opened a large crate, reached in, and handed Civette a bunch of cloths in different colors. “We’re going to play a little game of capture the flag.” Turning, Civette encompassed the area with a wave. “The active zone is from one end of the fort to the other, anywhere between the cliffs and the road. You’ll have ten minutes to arm yourselves, choose your bases, and strategize. Then I’ll turn Eliot loose.” He patted Eliot on the shoulder with patronizing familiarity. “Nonlethal only, no permanent damage,” he instructed, and Eliot turned his head minutely in acknowledgment. To the others, Civette said, “As for you guys, well, do your best.”

One of the Saudi’s men was already investigating the other contents of the crate. He pulled out an odd-looking gun. “This is....”

“Paintball markers,” Civette said. “For the safety of the observers, no live ammo, please. Any hand-to-hand weapons you might have on you, be my guest.” He flung his arms wide in an expansive gesture. “All right! Let’s get this party started. Time starts—now!”

A flurry of activity broke out, and Alec watched it with half his attention as the rest of his brain grappled with the...the ridiculousness, the _appallingness_ of the whole thing. The way Civette was treating all of this like it was pure fun and games—taking a human being, turning them not just into a weapon but into a _commodity_ , and then showing them off like they were some cool technological toy. (Seriously, Alec gave more respect to his robots than Civette was showing to Eliot). And on top of that, not a single person there seemed to be having the least little qualm about it. (And that one guy, what was up with that _human hunt_ business? That was some _Running Man_ shit, right there. Jesus.)

The most upsetting part, though, was how Eliot was just going along with it. He’d stood there like a living statue while Civette showcased him, not reacting at all. There had to be some kind of control factor in play, but Alec still had no clue as to exactly what it was. And while he couldn’t quite buy into Parker’s robot theory, he had to admit that it was starting to sound disturbingly plausible.

After much hustle and bustle—and a bit of territorial squabbling—the teams had established their bases and were settling in. Civette and company had repaired to higher ground: the top of a bunker that had probably been added to the site sometime during World War II. It put them uncomfortably close to where Alec was hunkered down in a clump of bushes, but hopefully all their attention would be fixed on the proceedings down below. In the center of an open space, Eliot had assumed a ready stance, poised on the balls of his feet; he wasn’t visibly targetting any of the enemy groups, but Alec was certain he’d already mapped out a plan of attack. Being Eliot, he’d undoubtedly spotted everyone’s tells and identified their fighting backgrounds and skill levels within moments of seeing them.

Civette was counting down the last seconds. “Three...two...one! _Go!_ ”

And Eliot exploded into action.

What followed was like a wet dream of a Hollywood fight sequence. Eliot flashed across the open area, the crossfire trailing him by a wide margin, leaving paint splattering the ground in his wake. On the far side he leaped up, caught the top of a wall that had to be, _damn_ , twelve feet high at least, and swung himself up. Two seconds later—if that—the pair of Brits who’d taken up a sniper position there were off the wall, and Eliot had his first flag.

“ _Holy—mmph!_ ” Alec had to jam his hand against his mouth to muffle his shock, but with all the surprised exclamations from the bigshots and the startled, angry yelling of the Russians who’d taken most of the missed shots, probably no one would’ve heard him away.

Stuffing the cloth into a pocket, Eliot jumped down onto a lower wall and ran lightly along it, leaping the occasional gap. The North Koreans had crammed themselves into a small, roofless enclosure with doors and windows on three sides to shoot through. They’d lost sight of Eliot when he’d gotten up onto the walls, and they were definitely not expecting it when he dropped down on them from above. Much screaming ensued.

The next glimpse Alec had of Eliot was when he burst out from behind the Korean base and charged the Saudis, actually holding a flailing thug up in front of him as a shield. It slowed him down some, but he was still on top of them before they could take more than a couple of shots each. He tossed the Korean at one of the men, then plunged into their group, and Alec was put in mind of that very first job they’d ever worked together, the way Eliot had danced like a demon with those four armed security guards, switching from one to another and then back at lightning speed, keeping them constantly off balance as he took them out—but this was impossibly even _faster_.

The men went down, _one, two_ , and then the Lebanese started firing across the sunken road that separated their base from the Saudis’. Eliot spun the two remaining Saudis, putting them between him and the incoming fire, and when they were hit from behind and sent staggering, he finished them off. Snatching up their guns, he whipped them at blurring speed toward the other base. Two of the Lebanese were knocked right off their feet, cold cocked into oblivion; the third man gaped down at them, and by the time he’d turned back, Eliot was in midair, leaping across the road. He came down with a punch from above that flattened the man, claimed his fourth flag, then slid down a bank on the far side of the base and disappeared from view.

A tense hush followed. The South Africans had set up an ambush scenario among the bushes and broken rocks near the cliff’s edge—their boss was actually out there with them, and while he might or might not be a murderous, people-hunting psychopath, Alec had to allow that he had some guts, as well as a decent handle on tactics. It was definitely the most organized out of the six groups.

Too bad Eliot came up on them from behind, straight up the side of the fucking _cliff_. There was an excruciatingly dangerous fight right next to the drop, and it was all Alec could do to sit still and not make a sound while his heart was trying to explode out of his chest. Even the bad guys gasped when one of the men went toppling over the edge. Eliot grabbed him before he could fall to his death, swung him around, and slammed him into two of his buddies, sending them all to the ground. While he was punching and kicking the three of them into submission, Hunter Guy came at him with a baton—Eliot dodged the first swing, blocked the second with his forearm ( _damn, ow_ ), then kicked out the man’s leg, hit him in the mouth, and took the baton away from him as he collapsed.

Turning, Eliot faced two of the Russians, who had advanced out of their base and had been waiting for a clear shot. Slowly he crouched down and plucked the South Africans’ flag off of Hunter Guy’s hat while they aimed at him with nervous care—

—and he launched himself at them. They started firing, and the baton blurred as he swung it, deflecting every goddamn shot. Panicking, they tried to retreat, but he was up in their faces before they got more than a step or two. He knocked the gun up out of hands of one man, sending it flying, introduced the baton to the solar plexus of the other, then turned back on the first. Wrenching the man’s arm up behind his back and pressing the baton against his throat, Eliot used the human shield tactic again. The Russian was a big guy, and Eliot didn’t try to lift him (Alec wouldn’t be surprised if he _could_ , but the man would be an awkward load to carry), instead bulldozing him relentlessly across the open ground between them and the base. The final fight was vicious—the Russians were the largest group and tried to dogpile Eliot with fists and knives—but after all that had come before, Alec found himself unsurprised when, once the metaphorical dust had settled, Eliot was left standing, surrounded by crumpled, groaning bodies.

Claiming the last flag, Eliot stalked up the slope toward the observers, a full-on Winter Soldier–style murder strut that should have been flat out terrifying but that Alec instead found absurdly sexy. Civette had started clapping slowly and appreciatively, while the others just stared in dumbfounded silence—a silence shattered by yells of shock and fear when Eliot suddenly broke pace, sprinting forward and leaping to the top of the bunker like a panther. There was a momentary confusion of scuffling and people scattering, and when it ended, Eliot had one hand around the Russian woman’s throat and the other locked onto her arm in an unyielding grip, forcing the gun she was holding skyward.

“ _Hey!_ ” Civette snapped.

The woman gasped out a breathless laugh. So she _was_ a hitter after all. “Just another test,” she wheezed. “Surprises happen sometimes, yes?”

“I said no live ammo,” Civette growled. The woman’s boss cleared his throat—from a safe distance—and Civette gave a dramatic sigh. “Fine. Let her go.” Eliot took the gun from the woman and then released her. Tucking the weapon into his waistband, he moved to Civette’s side and resumed his stance, as unruffled as if he hadn’t just taken out a small army all on his own. Alec hadn’t kept track of the time, but the whole thing couldn’t have lasted more than ten minutes, and a large chunk of that had been taken up with stalking the South Africans.

The assorted heavies were trailing over, most of them favoring some kind of injury, a couple being half carried. Hunter Guy limped to the bunker and hauled himself up. “Impressive,” he said. A trace of blood streaked the corner of his mouth, but his eyes were bright with interest. He stepped in close and tapped Eliot’s forearm. “This isn’t real, is it?”

Civette beamed, his annoyance swept away by the pleasure of being able to boast. “I suppose that depends on what you consider ‘real.’ It’s not entirely artificial, if that’s what you’re asking. Flesh and bone, but with some...improvements. We’ll get into the details at this afternoon’s meeting. For now,” raising his voice, he addressed the entire gathering, “thank you all for coming! I hope you enjoyed the demonstration. We’ll reconvene in the conference room after lunch to answer your questions and to discuss business.”

The crowd began to disperse. Not all of the men had thought to bring back the paint guns—probably because their brains were rattled—and Civette’s guards left his side to start collecting the weapons. The entire area was blotched with vivid splashes of red, which made it decidedly less scenic and would probably cause some historical association person somewhere to cry. Alec couldn’t bring himself to care too much, because at that moment his entire interest and concern were focused on Eliot.

All this time spent apart, and now Eliot was _so close_. The desire to reach out to him, to talk to him, was almost painful. Alec hesitated, then, moving slowly and with great care, switched the comm from the backup frequency he and Parker had been using to the usual one. Most likely nothing would come of it, probably Eliot had thrown away the comm last night, but....

Alec tapped the earbud.

And Eliot reacted. A barely visible twitch—if Alec hadn’t been staring right at him, he’d never have noticed. Holding his breath, he tapped again. Eliot cocked his head as if listening; he’d shifted out of his parade rest once most of the people were gone, and his hands, down by his sides, clenched into fists. One rapped against his thigh— _tap, tap_ —and Alec’s heart soared. Contact!

“Eliot,” Civette said, and then, “—Eliot?” Eliot’s attention jerked back to the man, who was frowning slightly. “What’s wrong?”

“Thought I heard something,” Eliot muttered. God, it was so good to hear his voice.

“Like what?” Civette asked. When Eliot didn’t reply immediately, he pressed, “Is there someone out there?”

“Yeah.”

Wait, what?

Civette’s frown disappeared, replaced by his usual boyishly arrogant smile. “Go get them—bring them here,” he said. Alec started shaking his head in disbelief, because surely Eliot wouldn’t—but he _was_ , he’d jumped down off the bunker and was shoving his way into the bushes where Alec was hiding. It had to be some kind of ruse—like, he’d search the area and say that he hadn’t found anything, and maybe they could exchange a few words before he had to go—but as Eliot bore down on Alec, his face expressionless but his attention grimly fixed, Alec realized this was real. Eliot was really coming for him, and before he could do more than gasp and try to get his feet under him so he could scramble away, Eliot had grabbed him and yanked him upright.

“Whoa!” Alec sputtered as Eliot manhandled him out of the bushes. “Whoa, whoa—hey!” Eliot dragged him over to the bunker and shoved him up against the wall, one hand fisted in his shirt.

Civette dropped down to join them. “Well, well,” he said, looking Alec over. “What do we have here?”

Alec swallowed nervously, his brain racing. “Hey, man, how—how you doing? I was just sitting up here enjoying the show, didn’t know it was a private thing. Y’all’s guys are really good, y’know—you part of some kind of professional league or something? League of, of paintballers?” He thanked God he’d dropped the mic when Eliot had grabbed him; explaining that away would’ve taken some doing. If Eliot mentioned it, though...and what the _fuck_ was Eliot doing? Did Civette really have that much power over him? Alec searched Eliot’s face but couldn’t get a read on him, especially not with those shades. And he didn’t dare do anything obvious that might give himself away, not with Civette right there, but he stared desperately into Eliot’s hidden eyes, trying with all his might to communicate _it’s me_ and _what are you doing_ and _please, man, don’t_.

Civette glanced at Eliot. “Do you think he’s telling the truth?”

Eliot’s jaw worked subtly. “No,” he said. His voice was a gritty rasp.

Civette’s eyebrows quirked upward. “Oh, yeah? So who do you think he is? A corporate spy? Or law enforcement? Maybe Interpol?”

“Alec Hardison,” Eliot said, and it felt just like the plummet from a rooftop, nothing but empty space all around him, the terrifying inexorability of gravity, and the absolute certainty that he was going to die, but there was grief in it too, the anguish of loss, the lightning strike of betrayal. For a moment Alec thought that he might actually _want_ to die. “He’s a hacker.”

“Huh.” Civette looked thoughtful, and Alec wondered whether his reputation had preceded him and if there might be some way to play that to his advantage. But when Civette’s attention refocued on him, the man was frowning. “Who are you working for?”

Despite his inner turmoil, Alec’s mouth somehow kept on going, running on pure autopilot. “Nobody, man. I’m here on vacation, taking a little break from it all.” He flexed his hands. “You know, carpal tunnel. Gotta take care of the hands.”

“Then nobody will miss him,” Civette said to Eliot. “Get rid of him.”

“Wait, what? No!” Alec grabbed onto Eliot’s forearm, and—it felt _wrong_. It was warm, and the skin felt like skin, but there was almost no give to it. Like there was something inhumanly hard just below the surface. And maybe that should’ve been the final nail in the coffin of Alec’s hope, but he just couldn’t stop trying, couldn’t let it go, and the plea tumbled out of him. “Eliot, c’mon, don’t.”

And...nothing happened.

Shouldn’t Eliot have moved to act already? Instead he stood rigid and unmoving, pinning Alec in place with a grip like steel. And was Alec imagining things, or were there signs of strain in Eliot’s face?

Civette had started walking away, but now he turned back. “Hey. Didn’t you hear me?”

Yeah, that was a familiar furrowing in Eliot’s forehead, his brows drawing in and down. His jaw was set, and he was breathing sharply through his nose. His fist tightened, twisting the fabric of Alec’s shirt. _Please_ , Alec mouthed, and from the corner of his eye he saw Civette’s expression turn thunderous.

“Eliot!” he snapped. “Do it! _Kill—_ "

— _BLAM_ , so close the sound shocked Alec’s brain to blankness, and _BLAM, BLAM_ , each deafening crack like a punch to the chest. The gun kept on firing, but he lost track of the number of shots in the surprise and confusion of realizing that there wasn’t any pain, that he wasn’t dying, wasn’t _dead...._

The shooting stopped. Civette was on his back, a bullet hole in the center of his forehead and two spreading stains of blood reddening his shirt. One of his bodyguards lay sprawled in the dirt some distance away; the other one was face down on top of the bunker, an arm dangling limply over the edge. Eliot had released Alec’s shirt and was standing motionless, arms down at his sides, the gun held loosely in his hand. Alec remembered that breathing was a thing and gulped air.

“Eliot?” he tried shakily. Eliot was staring down at Civette’s body. There was a slackness to his face that gave the impression of emptiness, like a robot that had been switched off (and damn it, there was yet another point of evidence for the robot theory). Or maybe it was just shock. Alec wasn’t sure.

“Eliot,” he said again. Another round of panic was starting to creep in on him. Holy shit, there were dead people all around him, Eliot had just _killed people_ in front of him. This was not a place they should stay in, this place with all the dead people in it, and he didn’t know what the fuck to do. “ _Eliot!_ ” He grabbed hold of Eliot and shook him, vaguely aware that it could be a dangerous thing to do, but— “We gotta get out of here. C’mon! _Eliot!_ ”

Eliot jolted, stepping backward. He raised the gun, and Alec froze, but instead of aiming at him, Eliot spun away and hurled the weapon far out over the sea. For the first time, Alec’s heart skipped with relief instead of fear.

“Let’s go!” Alec said. He started jogging toward the trail leading down to where he’d parked the car, then realized Eliot wasn’t with him and paused to look back. Eliot was taking something off Civette’s wrist. Straightening up, he strode forward to catch up with Alec, and together they took off.

Running downhill on the rough, poorly maintained trail kept Alec from thinking too much. It wasn’t until they were in the car and had pulled out onto the road that events caught up with him. His hands started to shake on the wheel. Civette was dead, and he had Eliot sitting next to him. Eliot, who had killed Civette. He knew what Eliot was capable of, of course, but Eliot never shared details with them, and he had definitely never seen it personally, and, and—

But it was _Eliot_. Eliot who always protected them.

Who had done it _for him_.

In the passenger seat next to him, Eliot sat silent and unmoving, staring out the side window. He could have been a sculpture, if not for the raw presence of him, a contained, dangerous force. There were a few flecks of red on his upper arm—paint, Alec thought; the color was too bright to be blood.

Probably?

Alec jerked his glance back to the road. “Oh my god,” he found himself muttering under his breath, “oh my god, oh my god.” Now what? What did they need to do next? He fought to get his brain back online. “Parker! _Parker!_ ” Why wasn’t she answering? Had something happened to her? Too soon for the police to descend, so what else—

“Damn it!” Fumbling for the earbud, he switched frequencies. “ _Parker!_ ”

“ _Where have you been! I’ve been trying to reach you. What’s going on?_ ” Parker sounded pissed off, angry-frightened instead of actually frightened, so she was probably safe. A huge burden of panic lifted itself from Alec’s chest. Not that he wasn’t still panicking for other reasons.

“We gotta go!” he said. “We gotta get out of here.”

“ _What—_ ”

“Civette’s dead. And I have Eliot.”

“ _Eliot?_ ” Her voice squeaked high before sharpening again. “ _Hardison! What. Happened_.”

“I’ll tell you all about it, but right now we got one very dead rich guy and two dead bodyguards all up in a tourist site and we need to _leave_ before the police get onto it.” Or Interpol—oh shit, how closely were they monitoring Civette? “Comin’ in hot in ten minutes.”

“ _Damn it! Okay—meet you in the parking lot._ ”

Alec blew out a breath of—not relief, exactly, but a tiny easing of tension. He looked at Eliot again. Still no reaction, and he wondered what was going through the man’s head.

“Hey,” he offered. “How you doing? You okay, man?” Eliot gave a tiny nod, so at least he wasn’t in some kind of shutoff mode. “What....” Alec licked his lips. “Aw, man, I got so many questions. Where you been? What happened to you? That guy...what did he _do_ to you?” Eliot’s lips tightened, but he didn’t answer. “C’mon, you gotta give me something. You have any idea how worried we were?” Still nothing but silence, and Alec’s churning emotions took a right-angle turn toward frustration and a sudden, flaring anger. “Over a year! A goddamned year! We tried to find you, and we couldn’t! It was like you just disappeared off the face of the earth. —Damn it, _say something_!”

Eliot shook his head.

Alec’s mouth fell open. “ _What?_ What ‘ _no_ ’? The hell you say ‘no’ to me!” With an effort, he fought his temper down. “Okay, I get that you’ve been through some shit, all right, but I think we _deserve_ some answers. Don’t you?”

The corners of Eliot’s mouth had turned down. His arm was resting along the bottom of the passenger-side window, and he started tapping his knuckle against the glass. It wasn’t easy to translate the code while driving, but somehow Alec managed to puzzle it out.

_C...A...N...’...T...._

“You... _can’t_?” He’d definitely heard Eliot talking back up in the fortress. “What do you mean, ‘can’t’?”

Eliot huffed a breath out his nose. _P...E...R...M...I...._

“Permission?” Alec guessed. Eliot didn’t signal a ‘no,’ so that was probably correct. “Okay, fine! Permission granted! Talk to me, man.” Eliot shook his head again. For a moment Alec was baffled, but then a terrible understanding crept in on him. “You mean, _his_ permission.” This time Eliot nodded, and Alec had to shift his attention to stare straight ahead while he processed the awful significance of that. Plus they were coming up onto the town limits, and he needed to watch the road more closely. After a few moments, he exhaled slowly.

“All right. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I got mad. I know you’ve been through some terrible things. It’s just...this is a lot to deal with.” If it was a lot for him, it had to be even worse for Eliot, and guilt pricked at him. Before he could try to correct his apology, Eliot’s hand gripped his arm, firmly but gently. Surprised, he glanced down at it, then up at Eliot’s face. Eliot was still looking out the window, avoiding his gaze, but he squeezed Alec’s arm lightly before releasing it.

Alec’s heart ached with so many feelings that he couldn’t put names to them all, but one in particular rushed to the top, like a bubble racing for the surface of a liquid and bursting into light and air: the overpowering need to make things _right_ again, to take care of Eliot, to have him well and whole and _happy_ and with them for good. _God, I love you, we both love you, please, man, don’t ever leave us again_ —the words hovered on the tip of his tongue, but he held them back.

Now wasn’t the time. It wasn’t fair to Eliot, springing all this on him without warning after all the trauma he’d undoubtedly been through, they all had too much to work through first, and Parker—Parker had to be in on it too.

Speaking of which, they’d arrived at the resort’s parking lot, and there was Parker, fidgeting at the curb. She’d managed to collect their bags, which must have taken impressive speed, but then again she had a habit of never unpacking all her things, and she and Eliot had been training him to contain his sprawl. When the car pulled up, she flung the bags into the back seat ( _ouch_ , his laptop), then slid in next to them. She stayed coiled up in the corner behind the driver’s seat as Alec took off again, instead of perching in the middle as she usually did.

“Eliot,” she said, short and cool. Eliot glanced up at her reflection in the rearview mirror, then gave her another of those slight nods. Wow, not like there was any tension in this car or anything, but Alec figured they’d just have to wait and work it all out when they weren’t actively fleeing from the law.

“Parker, where we going?” he asked.

“Podgorica,” she said without a beat of hesitation—she’d probably been planning their escape from the second he’d said they were blown—and he set a course for the main road out of town.


	5. Chapter 5

After an hour or so of uncomfortably quiet driving, they ended up at an AirBnB on the outskirts of the city. The house was small but decent: two bedrooms, a living room, and an eat-in kitchen, everything slightly dated but well-kept and clean and stocked with all the necessities. The instant they walked inside, Eliot did an aggressive security check, inspecting every method of ingress and yanking open closet doors like he expected to find an army of yakuza hiding out in there. After a last sweep for cameras and bugs (which was usually Alec’s job, but it hadn’t really seemed necessary in a place like this), Eliot fetched up in a corner of the living room and just—stopped.

Alec hesitated, not really sure what to do next. There was something weirdly disconnected about Eliot—it was like he didn’t know what to do with himself now that they were someplace safe and he didn’t have to be actively protecting them. Trauma, Alec reminded himself, from the kidnapping and the body modification plus whatever mindfuckery Civette had pulled on him. His heart twinged with empathy, and he realized suddenly that he’d never actually welcomed Eliot back to them. He started forward to correct that oversight, his arms opening wide, then froze when Eliot twitched, flinching into a defensive posture.

Okay. A little too fast, there. He wasn’t quite ready to give up the attempt, though. “Hey, now,” he said, keeping his voice low and light. “Can’t a brother bring it in for a hug?” Eliot faltered in and out of his stance a couple of times before finally letting it go and straightening up. Drawing closer, Alec eased into reach and wrapped his arms around Eliot. After a moment, some of the tension went out of Eliot’s body; his arms came up and curved around Alec’s back, his hands pressing flat against Alec’s shoulder blades. He even rested his face against the crook of Alec’s neck, and Alec hummed in delight. Even though Eliot still stood stiff and awkward in his arms, the hug was wonderfully satisfying. It was also the longest and possibly least combative hug they’d ever shared. In fact, Alec ended up being the one to separate them—reluctantly, but there were things that needed doing.

“Okay, come on over here,” he said, tugging Eliot in the direction of the couches, next to which he’d left his stuff. “I’m gonna set you up with a tablet so you can communicate better. No more of this Morse code business.” As he unzipped his electronics bag, he offered a reassuring smile to Parker, who was staring at them from where she stood half hidden behind the kitchen doorway, holding an alarmingly large knife that was causing Alec to have some serious questions about the BnB’s owner. He figured she’d settle down a bit once they all got to talking. At any rate, he hoped so. “Then you can tell us the whole story of what happened. What they...what they did to you.” His voice trembled on the last words, and he had to rein his emotions back in before he could look up at Eliot.

Who had stopped short and was staring into space. His lips were slightly parted, as if he’d just caught his breath; his expression was hard to read ( _distracted? startled?_ ), and Alec was still trying to parse it when Eliot surged back into motion. He strode for the front door, blowing past Alec like he wasn’t even there.

“Hey! _Hey!_ ” Alec lunged after him. He caught up on the driveway—lucky for him Eliot had paused to look around like he hadn’t quite decided where he was going, because if Eliot really took off running there was no way Alec was going to catch up with him. Grabbing hold of Eliot’s upper arm, he gave the man a shake. “What the hell, man? What’re you doing?” Eliot jerked out of his grip, but Alec immediately stepped forward and latched onto him again. “Nuh-uh, there is _no way_ I am letting you just walk away like that!” He tried to pull Eliot around to look at him, but Eliot turned his head away. That refusal hurt like a punch to the chest—Alec felt like he could hardly breathe. And again, almost at once, the pain transmuted itself into anger.

“We have been _looking_ for you nonstop since you disappeared,” he snapped. “And now we finally have you back with us, you’re just going to vanish again? Just like that? No!” He jabbed a finger back in the direction of the house. “You get back in there and sit your ass down on that couch, and you _tell_ us what the fuck is wrong, why you’re running away from us. You hear me?”

Eliot’s entire being was a single shout of _dammit, Hardison_ as he whipped around to face Alec. Almost vibrating with frustration, he wrenched free again, but instead of trying to leave, he snatched up Alec’s hand and started sketching letters onto his palm.

_Danger._

Alec frowned. Whatever he’d been expecting, it wasn’t that. “Danger, what danger?”

_They can track me._

Alec stared at him. Suddenly the whole thing made a lot more sense. Once again, Eliot was protecting them, just like he always did—always _had_ , and still _was_ , and that realization, the sure knowledge that they were still his, just like he was still theirs, melted Alec’s anger in a heartbeat, leaving behind the warm glow of affection and love.

And also a pang of grief for Eliot, who apparently felt like his only recourse was to get as far away from them as possible. Licking his lips, Alec pulled himself together so he could focus on the situation and start problem solving. “Okay. Well, we have some time, don’t we? I mean, it’s not like they’re gonna fall out of the sky on us, right?”

“It depends on who it is and how far away they are,” Parker said. She’d followed them as far as the doorstep, where she stood watching them guardedly. She’d left the knife behind, though. “And what resources they have in the area.”

“As far as we know, it was just Civette and his guys here.” He looked at Eliot, who nodded shortly. “So we have time to talk and plan.” Eliot hesitated, then nodded again, and some of the rigidity went out of him as he finally surrendered. With an inward sigh of relief, Alec put his arm around Eliot’s shoulders and gave him a gentle squish. “Trust me, man, it’s gonna be okay.”

Eliot’s head jerked up. Startled, Alec followed the direction of his gaze to where a sour-faced old lady in a kerchief was staring at them over the driveway-side hedge. Well, shit. Did she speak English? Had they been saying anything that could cause them trouble later on? They’d better give her something else to focus on, just in case. It occurred to him that in addition to him hugging Eliot, they were still basically holding hands, and he rolled with it, making a little kissy face at the woman as he pulled Eliot closer against him. (Inasmuch as he could, since Eliot had gone steel-spring tense again, apparently ready to defend them against somebody’s grandma.) The woman’s pinched expression cracked into a slight smile, and she gave them a thumbs up before disappearing behind the hedge again.

Alec blinked. That...hadn’t been the reaction he’d been aiming for, but he’d take it. Shaking off his surprise, he urged Eliot along with him, back into the house, and after seeing Eliot settled onto one of the couches, he started rummaging around in his bag.

“So how’re they tracking you? GPS?” At Eliot’s nod, Alec pulled out a jammer and tossed it to him. “Keep this on you—it’ll block the signal.” Eliot turned it over in his hands, staring down at it, then slipped it into a pocket. Alec opened a messaging app on his tablet and handed it to Eliot, then sat down himself, taking out his phone. “OK, so who are ‘they’? Who’ve we got to worry about?”

Eliot hesitated, thumbs hovering over the letters, then started typing.

_Project scientists. Civette owns me but they did the work._

“ _Owned_ ,” Parker said sharply. She’d been leaning on the couch back behind Alec, reading over his shoulder. “He’s dead, right?” Eliot paused, then nodded. “So he doesn’t own you anymore. In fact, he _never_ owned you!” Her voice rose, raw and furious, as her outrage ramped up. “Nobody just _owns_ people like that!”

Centuries of slavery worldwide would beg to differ, but Alec was in one hundred percent agreement with her. “He stole you, that’s all,” he said gently, soothingly, because Eliot was looking a bit poleaxed. “He stole your freedom; now we’ve stolen it back for you. You can do with it whatever you like.”

After a long moment of silence, Eliot ducked his head. He typed, backspaced, typed some more.

_He owned the tech. Don’t know who has a claim on it now._

Alec was dying to ask about the technology, but with a heroic effort he stayed focused on the immediate issue. “These scientists, then, what about them? Who are they?”

The pause this time was even longer, and it was tense rather than emotional. Eliot’s shoulders hunched; he started breathing harder, and Alec could see the muscles of his jaw bunch as he ground his teeth. When his grip on the tablet started turning white-knucked, Alec intervened. “You can’t talk about them.” Eliot let out a low grunt of affirmation. “Damn it.”

Eliot flew into a burst of typing. _Most won’t come for me. Not on their own. Doctors, techs. Might talk to the law. Or clients._ Like the guys at Civette’s meeting, Alec surmised. Yeah, if they found out that Civette’s demo model was running around loose, some of them might want to snatch him up. He remembered the crazy-eyed South African and shuddered.

Eliot had stopped to think; now he resumed typing, his lip caught between his teeth as he concentrated. _Docs don’t know much. Techs maybe. Project leads most likely. Esp._ —and he wrestled internally before the rest came— _brain guy. Knows most._ Eliot grimaced. _Possessive._

Alec whistled as he leaned back, processing all that information. The last part in particular—there was definitely a story there, and it was probably a terrible one. But it also highlighted what had to be their number one priority.

“So this brain guy, he’s the one who put the controls on you, right?” Eliot nodded. “How’d he do it?” They absolutely had to get that undone, not just to ungag Eliot—although that was definitely a wrong that needed to be righted—but to make sure that nobody coming after them could take him over and start giving him commands.

Instead of typing, Eliot shifted uneasily on the couch. Slowly, as if reluctant, he turned sideways and lifted his hair up off the back of his neck. Alec was puzzled at first, but as he got up and approached Eliot, a possibility was already starting to creep in on him. It was _highly_ implausible, because this was reality and not science fiction (alas), and the relevant technology was still only in its baby stages—but when he crouched down behind Eliot, he found himself staring at what was unmistakably a port at the base of Eliot’s skull.

“Holy shit!” he yelped. “You got a _computer_ in your brain? Oh my god, that’s so cool!” Eliot growled, and Alec backtracked quickly. “I mean, it’s a terrible invasion of your bodily autonomy. But also— _damn_ , that’s cool.” He couldn’t keep himself from grinning as he shook his head. “Oh man, that is _so_ cyberpunk.”

“It’s creepy,” Parker declared, and with a sigh Alec resigned himself to the fact that nobody else was going to look on the bright side. And okay, yes, it was _extremely_ wrong that someone had done this to Eliot against his will—that part was not cool _at all_ , and if he ever found this “brain guy,” he was going to make that person very, very sorry. Sorry for _life_.

There was a plus to this particular situation, though—he wouldn’t have had a clue what to do if Eliot had been conditioned psychologically or with mind-altering chemicals, not without a lot of research that they might not have time for. But this? This he had a shot at figuring out.

Rising quickly, he returned to his stuff, grabbed his laptop and some cables, and hustled back over to Eliot’s side—then drew up short, as the full implications of what he was about to do caught up with him. Tentatively he held up a cable where Eliot could see it. “Hey. Is it okay if I...?”

Eliot nodded, and...god, the trust in that brought Alec’s heart into his throat. Eliot shifted down the couch so Alec could sit behind him, and as Alec reached forward and brushed Eliot’s hair upward with one hand, he was keenly aware of how just soft it was, of how vulnerable the back of Eliot’s neck seemed. “I, uh...kinda feel like I should be taking you out to dinner first,” he murmured as he lined up the cable, and Eliot snorted—with wry humor rather than annoyance, and that comforted Alec to no end. He carefully inserted the cable, then opened up his laptop and plugged Eliot in.

It wasn’t too difficult to get the hardware to recognize each other. When he started probing for access, though, Eliot twitched, and he froze. “Can you feel that?” he wondered, and Eliot nodded. “Whoa. What’s it feel like?” Setting down the tablet, Eliot laced his fingers together. Alec wasn’t entirely sure how that translated, but it seemed...intimate. His face heated a little, and he quickly refocused on his hacking. “Huh.... Okay, you got a password here. I’m gonna have to crack it, so that might take a little while. Unless you know what it is?”

Eliot shook his head, then paused, seeming to recollect something. From the same pocket where he’d stashed the jammer, he took out a smartwatch and handed it back to Alec.

“Huh—this was Civette’s?” He remembered Eliot taking something off the man’s wrist. Eliot nodded, and Alec jumped a little as the watch vibrated and lit up. “What the...wait, did _you_ just do that?” His jaw dropped at Eliot’s affirmative.

“The hell? You got _cellular_ in your head?” He gaped in disbelieving wonder at the tiny alert display, even as he made a mental note to get Eliot off Civette’s carrier and onto one of theirs pronto. “Oh my god, there’s an _app_ for you.” He poked at the screen, but of course it was fingerprint protected. Not that _that_ would make any difference. Chortling, he popped open the back cover of the watch and plucked out its SD card. It was the work of a minute or so to get all the data off it, and then he was in. Inside Eliot’s _head_ —or, well, the computer that was integrated with it. Unsurprisingly, there was an awful lot of very complex code going on in there, and he stared at it, biting his lip.

“Okay...so what I’m going to do is clone all of this to my laptop so I can mess around with it and not accidentally delete something important or, you know, program you to talk like Mal Reynolds. Which is totally not something I would ever do on purpose.” Even though it would be hilarious and probably also pretty damn sexy.

“You’re going to clone Eliot’s _brain_?” Parker had moved to sit cross-legged on the other couch; she peered at Alec suspiciously, as if he’d just revealed that he might actually have been an evil mad scientist all this time.

“No, no, just the software that Civette’s guy put into him. Naw, if brain cloning was a thing, that’s where we get into dystopias where rich white folks steal young people’s bodies so they can live forever. I am definitely not okay with that.” As he watched the progress bar fill, he idly wondered if that had been on Civette’s agenda. It wouldn’t surprise him one bit. Every time he thought about what the man had done, had been _capable_ of doing without so much as a qualm, it made him equal parts pissed off and horrified.

Something occurred to him then, and he leaned forward to address Eliot. “Hey. So if Civette had control over you, how was it you were able to shoot him?”

Eliot sat still for a long moment before slowly picking up the tablet and typing. When he finished, he held it up so Alec could read over his shoulder, which he did out loud, for Parker’s benefit.

“He only said ‘kill.’ ”

Oh. _Oh_. Because in that split second between words, Eliot had acted. Had taken his shot before Civette could specify exactly _who_.

Even as a prisoner in his own mind and body, still he’d found a way.

Reaching forward, Alec gripped Eliot’s shoulder and squeezed it hard. Didn’t need speech to communicate this. And words would be inadequate anyway,

When he let go, Eliot typed very briefly and then held up the tablet again.

_Fix me._

“Absolutely,” Alec promised, his throat tight. “We’re gonna fix you right up. No problem.”


	6. Chapter 6

From his position near the back door, he stared out across the walled-in patio. Ten points of ingress, but the doors were the most likely, and this one gave him the best vantage of the living room where Hardison was working, eyes locked intensely on his laptop, fingers alternately flying and still. Hardison was wearing headphones; with his hearing amplified, he could make out the music, something with a thudding electronic beat.

Level four alertness said he was overdue to recheck the perimeter. It bothered Hardison, though, when he patrolled as often as he should. The man’s gaze would leave the computer to follow him, expression dark and troubled. _Eliot, man, would you just sit? You’re distracting me_ , Hardison had complained at last.

So he’d sat.

He didn’t _have_ to sit. The knowledge was crystal sharp. He’d chosen to—he could choose right now to get up and do the damn patrol if he wanted.

(And he _did_ want. Beyond the impersonal pricking demands of _security level_ and _protocols_ , the need to keep Hardison safe was an imperative that went right down into the heart of him, keen hooks set as deeply as they could go. Nothing that bastard Civette had done could ever make him _want_ like that, so profoundly that it was more like a need.)

But there was a balance. If he distracted Hardison, it would slow things down, and they absolutely needed to get all the traps and bugs out of his head as fast as possible, before anyone could take advantage of them. He’d made his best calculation of how much margin they had, but there were too many variables. How soon would Civette’s death make the news? How long would it take for Sakimoto to find out about it? Could he get around Hardison’s jammer? If not, could he mobilize people on the ground to search for them, and how much time would that take? Interpol (... _Sterling_ ) and, more distantly, the local police were also threats, but they couldn’t get inside his head and make him a danger to Parker and Hardison. He could hold them off if he needed to. Put them down, if he must.

Sakimoto’s hold on him _had_ to be neutralized, or they would never be safe.

“Uh, E?” Hardison had pulled the headphones away from one ear like he’d forgotten he wasn’t going to get a spoken response. He was staring at the laptop, his eyes wide. “Are you recording _all_ the time?”

Oh. _Shit._ He waited for Hardison to glance up at him, then shook his head.

“ _Eliot!_ ” Parker’s voice rang out from the laptop, bright and happy. Hardison’s eyes flicked back to the screen; he swallowed tightly and tapped a key. The sounds of scuffling cut off abruptly, leaving just the music.

“Are you recording right now?” Hardison asked, a little hoarsely. He shook his head again, and Hardison nodded. “Uh, okay. Better not to until I, uh, switch your uploads over to one of my servers.” Looking down, Hardison dropped the earphone back into place and tapped the key again.

_Don’t watch that_ , he wanted to say, and couldn’t. Instead he turned his hearing down so he didn’t have to listen to Parker’s shrieks of fury and pain.

Not that it made any difference. His memory of that encounter was precise and flawless in all its razor-edged detail, clearer and more complete than the older memories that were still frustratingly remote. He closed his hands into fists, even though there was no way to punch through that distance.

Or was there? He’d fought against Civette’s control, resisting until he’d found enough leeway to get around that killing order. Maybe there was some way to take this on.

Closing his eyes, he focused inwardly. He’d never consciously _tried_ to feel his way into the things inside his skull, but he knew what the contact was like, the sense of something foreign and not-him shifting around in there. He’d experienced it so many times in the lab, wired up to Sakimoto’s computers. And then again, a little over an hour ago, with Hardison. He knew that technically there was no difference between those contacts—it was just wires and circuitry transmitting information. And the brain itself wasn’t able to register physical sensations. But it had... _felt_ different. Something in the hesitancy with which Hardison had approached him, the gentle brush of those fingers, the tentative, searching care as he’d explored those pathways inside. And that joke....

The familiar teasing. The ease with each other, the give and take.

Being spoken to, _touched_ , like an actual human being.

God, he hadn’t even known how much he’d missed it. How much he’d missed _them_.

He set his jaw as anger reared up in him again. Picturing himself glaring at the technological crap inside his head (like he could intimidate it, which he knew was ridiculous), he tried to recapture the sense of what Hardison had done, what had responded and moved. He knew there were things he could do, signals he could send and receive, so it _should_ be possible to—

And there, that was...something.

_Fuck_ , that was complicated.

After a minute and a half of puzzling, he still had no idea what in the hell he was looking at, and angry or not, he knew better than to try messing around with it any further. He’d probably break something, and the last thing he needed to do was make Hardison’s job more difficult. He glanced sidelong at the hacker, who was working with renewed focus, and he smiled inwardly at the fiercely determined expression on Hardison’s face.

Maybe Hardison could teach him. Later, when they were safe and had time.

A car pulled up outside. Turning up his hearing, he gathered himself in case he needed to move. But there was no stealth in the way the car door slammed. The threat level lowered, then dropped again at the sound of familiar strides. The door unlocked and opened, and Parker entered, carrying a couple of shopping bags. She went straight to Hardison and handed him a bottle of orange soda. “Thanks, babe,” he murmured, barely glancing up from the screen.

As she turned toward the kitchen, she caught him looking at her. She paused, then held his gaze warily as she crossed the room. The bruise on her face stood out clearly, livid against her pale skin. His fault, and the wrong he’d done burned in him. Rising, he took the tablet to the kitchen pass through, careful to move slowly—not that he could surprise Parker anyway. When she looked at him again, he held up his message.

_I’m sorry._

Her eyes flicked from the words back up to his face. “Oh yeah?” she challenged. “You want me to believe you’re sorry?” She thumped one of the shopping bags onto the counter in front of him. “Then _tell_ me.” Tilting her head, she regarded him with narrowed eyes and lips pressed tightly together, then whirled and stalked out of the kitchen.

After a moment of surprise and confusion, he investigated the contents of the bag. There were chicken breasts, penne, lemons, herbs....

Over a year. He hadn’t cooked. Hadn’t so much as touched unprepared food.

Hadn’t even _cared_ what he’d been eating.

The realization hit him like a gut punch. He couldn’t cry, not tears—that had been taken from him too. But he hunched forward over the counter, shaking, his insides twisting like a wrung-out cloth as his breath stuttered and caught. The feelings were pure agony, and he didn’t dare look toward Parker and Hardison, because if they were watching him, if he saw pity or grief or pain in their eyes, then he’d be completely overcome.

He got himself under control finally. Reaching into the bag, he pulled out one of the bunches of herbs. Basil—he raised it and inhaled its fragrance, green and spicy-sweet. Eyes closed, he drank it in as memories flickered through his mind, nearer somehow, more real, as if the scent had touched something primal deep in his brain, beyond the machine. At last he straightened and went to investigate the kitchen cabinets to see what else he had to work with, some possibilities already coming together in his mind, just waiting for that spark of inspiration.

* * *

Alec’s heart was jumping as he approached the kitchen table, both in excitement and in trepidation. Excitement because—Eliot had cooked for them! They hadn’t had Eliot food in _so long_. And trepidation because—what if Civette had fucked something up inside Eliot’s head and taken away Eliot’s genius for cooking, or, worse yet, his joy in it. He’d already had so much stolen from him.

Whatever he’d made _smelled_ really delicious though, and Alec inhaled appreciatively. There was chicken and pasta in some kind of lemon-herb sauce, and as he sat down he enthused, “Man, this looks great! I can’t wait to try it.” Eliot’s face made some kind of grimace that probably signaled nervousness. Parker slid into the seat next to Alec, across the table from Eliot; ducking her head low, she sniffed at the plate like a skeptical cat. She forked up a bite of chicken and a couple of pieces of pasta, gave it a tiny, experimental lick, then put the whole thing in her mouth.

And froze.

Alec froze as well, holding his breath. After her initial confusion, Parker had become a connoisseur of Eliot food-feels, and if this wasn’t up to snuff, there went any hope of a quick or easy reconciliation. Putting a hand over her mouth, Parker closed her eyes. She chewed slowly and swallowed, her face crumpling up with emotion—then lunged up from her seat. Flinging herself around the table, she threw her arms around Eliot. A sob escaped her as she pressed her cheek against his hair.

Eliot had been tense from the moment they’d sat down, doubly so from Parker’s first taste. After a jolt of startled reaction, he surrendered, softening in her embrace. Bowing his head against her shoulder, he put his arm around her and held her close, so very carefully. A tiny shiver went through him, and then Alec’s vision blurred with rising tears.

Drawing a choked-up breath, he wiped at his eyes, blinked them clear in time to see Parker lean back slightly. Her hands cupped Eliot’s face, and he reached up to rest his fingers lightly against the bruise on her cheek, so much pain in his expression. Parker smiled at him, and for a moment Alec thought she was going to kiss him—which was a thing they were going to aim for, but he didn’t know that this was the right time at all, and—but then her smile faded to doubt and caution. She studied Eliot’s sunglasses, eyes flicking over them warily as if measuring approaches and risks. When she went to take them off him, Eliot reared back, his mouth tightening.

“It’s okay,” she half whispered. She slipped them off; his eyes were closed, and when he blinked them open to look up at her...all right, yes, that was _extremely_ disconcerting. Especially the way those luminous green lenses shifted as Eliot searched Parker’s face. _Damn_.

But...those were still Eliot’s microexpressions, the tightening around his eyes, the tremor of his mouth as his breath came short, bracing for Parker’s reaction. Biting her lip, she looked at him for long seconds, holding his gaze as if trying to stare through it, all the way down into Eliot’s heart. Then she smiled, a little shakily.

“Well,” she murmured, “green _is_ my favorite color.”

All the air rushed out of Alec in a huff of laughter. Releasing Eliot, Parker skipped around the table and dropped back into her seat. Alec took advantage of the break in tension to shovel in a mouthful of food, and the rush of flavor swept over him: lemony sweet with a bite of herbal spice, rich but at the same time light and subtly complex. It was like early summer, the long slant of evening sunlight in Eliot’s garden as he let them taste a bit of this, a bit of that, everything warm and easy and peaceful—all the depths of the man beyond the hitter.

“Oh man, this is so good,” Alec half moaned, his voice quavering a little. “ _So_ good.” When he got a hold of himself enough to glance up, Eliot was looking down at his own plate, smiling faintly.

It was the first time he’d smiled since they’d found him.

* * *

They were ready. Hardison had the laptop on the kitchen table, positioned so both of them could see the screen, with the cable snaking around to the back of his neck. (Hardison had silently offered it to him to plug in, but he’d turned and bent his head to let Hardison do it. Because he trusted the man and wanted to show it, both to calm Hardison’s obvious nerves and because...it felt right. Hardison’s hands had been gentle, almost reverent, lifting his hair out of the way and sliding the plug home, and it had stirred something quicksilver bright inside his chest.) Parker was sitting on the pass-through’s counter, watching them with the coiled alertness of a cat.

“Okay,” Hardison murmured. “Accessing now.” And there it was, that otherness inside his head, but so different from how it had been in the lab—it was just _there_ , present but not controlling. He couldn’t see it or touch it—it was like instinctively knowing that somebody was in the room with you, even though they were hidden and silent.

“Hey,” Hardison said gently, distracting him from trying to “locate” that not-person. Shifting the laptop slightly so he had a better angle to look at the screen, Hardison did something that rearranged the windows, enlarging one and bringing it to the front. “So I just cobbled together this GUI, because the original interface was definitely user-unfriendly. I can refine it some more when we get home.”

_Home_. That was a thought he wanted to dwell on, but didn’t, because it was still a long ways off, and he couldn’t afford to lose himself in imagining it, _aching_ for it, not when they were still in danger. Hardison was saying something about code and modules that sounded very abstract and not at all relevant; he tapped on the table, then wrote _Later_ on it with his finger. Maybe Hardison would forget by then.

“Okay, fair enough, getting right down to business, then.” Hardison cleared his throat. “So these tabs give access to various different functions.” He sent the cursor skipping from one to the next, opening them and indicating their contents. “Audio/video, networking, communications, physiological monitoring, computer diagnostics. Tactical. And...admin.” He sketched a circle over the icons in that last tab. “This here includes more advanced computer diagnostics and repair, as well as access to upload new software, apply updates, and even rewrite some code directly _if_ you feel especially daring and reckless. And also, what we’re most interested in: the control module.” The latter looked like any other app icon, but when Hardison clicked on it, he _felt_ it, like an echoing click inside his head, and he tensed.

Hardison gave him a little sidelong glance before refocusing on the screen. “So we got a couple of options here. We can just turn off the controls; it leaves them still in there but deactivated. The risk of course is that if someone gets admin access to you, they can just turn them back on.” Looking up again, Hardison read his reaction and smiled tightly. “Yeah, I figured. The other option is to delete them entirely.” Hardison held up a hand in warning. “Now, I did my very best to make sure I isolated these pieces so that if we delete them, we don’t delete anything else by accident. But it’s possible I made a mistake. I saved a clean copy as a backup, so I should be able to recover anything that gets lost. But the experience might be weird or uncomfortable or...I don’t even know. Are you willing to take that chance?”

Absolutely. He nodded firmly, and Hardison gave a little sigh.

“All right. Here we go.” As Hardison started selecting items from a list, Parker slid off the counter and eased around the table. She crouched down next to him, her grip steady and tight as she took hold of his hand. He squeezed back, carefully.

Hardison clicked on a button that said “Remove,” then turned the laptop fully toward him and sat back as a dialogue box popped up.

_Are you sure you want to delete these files?_

He took a moment to breathe in the amazing freedom of being given that choice.

Then he reached out and clicked.

There was no dramatic change, no sudden rush of liberation. His head was still full of programs and protocols; his memories were still flat and abstract. But there was an internal _blip_ and then...they were his.

It was _all_ his.

A little nervously, Eliot wet his lips. “Hey,” he tried. Glancing up, he saw wonder and naked delight kindling in Hardison’s expression, replacing anxious tension like dawn taking over the sky, and he smiled faintly. “Thanks, man.”

Hardison flung both arms up and whooped so loudly that he flinched—and then Parker’s weight thumped down onto his lap. Cupping his face in her hands, she bent and mashed her lips against his before he even realized what she was doing, and _what—_ turned to ... _oh_ , then to _of course_ , because he could see it now, what the three of them been building toward all this time, as natural and inexorable as the turning of the earth. And finally, at last, to _yes._

_Yes._

When Parker released him, he looked up into her smiling face, tiny pinpoints of green light from his eyes reflecting in her pupils, then turned to Hardison, who’d gotten up and was hovering above them. Hardison hesitated, then swooped in to brush a kiss on his cheek. Before the man could pull back, Eliot grabbed him and dragged him in close, breathed in the scent of a familiar aftershave as he pressed his lips to the corner of Hardison’s jaw then buried his face in his neck. And then Parker was laugh-crying and Hardison’s voice was quavering out his name as he wrapped his arms around them both, crushing them against him with ferocious love and care.

And for the first time in a long, long while, Eliot felt complete.


	7. Epilogue

“What’s the news?” Parker asked, leaning in over Alec’s shoulder, her hair brushing his cheek as she tilted her head against his.

“Police in Budva are still looking for answers in the shocking murder of tech magnate Noel Civette and his bodyguards. In the meantime, superstar Interpol agent James Sterling has uncovered a horrific multinational human trafficking ring. Rumor has it that they were involved with some kind of illegal medical experimentation, but investigations are still ongoing.” He reached up and petted her hand where it rested on the back of his chair. So far, so good.

“Do you think Sterling will keep his end of the deal?” Parker wondered. “Maybe we should have threatened him some more.”

“I think we hit a pretty good balance.” Sterling was nothing if not self-serving. He’d been given all the evidence he needed to make a huge case and gain himself some big-time accolades (not that he really needed any more, and the fact that he couldn’t seem to help pursuing them probably said some very sad things about his early childhood). Even if gratitude for their help didn’t move him, Leverage Inc. was small potatoes in comparison, and not worth the headaches they’d cause if he tried to come after them. (And while Sterling could suspect Eliot of killing Civette all he liked, there was no actual proof.) So they’d blustered at each other, and bargained, and eventually settled back into their usual state of deeply suspicious detente.

Staying at the current headquarters was a risk. But Sterling must have known that they’d been there for a while, and yet he’d left them alone until he’d needed them for something. So they’d agreed that, for the time being, they could live with that risk. And it made Alec glad, because despite himself he’d put down some roots here. He—they—were doing good in this neighborhood, with the STEAM classes for the kids and the job training workshops for the adults, the event nights and free gallery space and local outreach projects. And there preliminary plans toward setting up a Toby-style cooking school-slash-restaurant with bonus community garden just down the street, which had _somebody_ extremely excited and completely failing to keep up a gruff demeanor about it.

Alec glanced out the office window. Out in the lobby, Eliot was in the midst of a rant about the practicality of gunblades, which Jamila was countering with good-humored sass and the power of both coolness and game-world physics on her side.

Of course, Sterling didn’t need to know about all of Eliot’s modifications. Using the hardware in Eliot’s brain as a gateway, they’d broken into the project’s servers and edited the information there pretty severely. Turned out Eliot hadn’t been the first attempt—only the final showpiece, after a number of less successful attempts that had ended in death, either accidental or, in some cases, deliberate. That was the data they’d passed along to Interpol, along with information on all the people involved, both suppliers and scientists. Civette was in there too, and following up that lead would hopefully give Sterling the concrete proof that he needed to open an investigation into Civette’s potential buyers, tying the whole mess up in a roundabout but neat package.

Eliot’s records they’d stolen away for themselves, and Alec was still bringing himself up to speed on the technical specs. Hydroxyapatite-infused bones with silicon carbide/magnesium armor plating under the skin on his forearms and calves, some kind of 3-D nanoparticle mesh running through all his muscles, an amplified neuroendocrine system, and, crowning it all, the hardware wired into his nervous system that monitored and adjusted the whole as well as providing all those other computing functions. It was a Frankensteinian melding of biomedicine, nanomaterial compounds, and neural engineering, and Alec was slightly terrified that he might someday have to do a repair job on any part of it.

Well. Hopefully that day would be far, far in the future, and he’d have some time to educate himself first.

His phone buzzed, and he glanced down at the screen.

_Hey, you guys coming or what?_

He looked out the window again. Jamila had left, taking her project with her, and Eliot was watching him with a smirk, hands tucked casually into his pockets.

It was possible he might regret teaching Eliot how to hack around inside his own brain.

...nah. It was Eliot’s brain, after all. He should be able to do what he wanted with it.

Putting the laptop to sleep, Alec tucked it into its bag and rose.

“Ice cream now?” Parker asked hopefully.

“Ice cream now,” he said, smiling.

And as they joined up with Eliot, Alec watched how his expression shifted, that smirk shifting to a softer smile as he gazed at the two of them. There was no joy in all the world like seeing Eliot look so tender and so... _happy_.

They’d done it. They’d brought him home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to darkwingdukat for beta reading! ^_^


End file.
